Quick Walkthrough

If you are a company or individual doing commercial embedded products, you can:

  • Download and use BeRTOS as you want
  • Sell products based on BeRTOS, without paying nothing nor giving your application source code

but you must:

  • Write that you are using BeRTOS in the documentation.
    A text like this is sufficient: "This product uses BeRTOS (http://www.bertos.org), Copyright 2005-2008 Develer S.r.l."
  • If you modified BeRTOS, offer the modified version of BeRTOS for download from your website.
    Otherwise, you can send your modifications to us, and when they get integrated within the official BeRTOS release, you can stop offering them for download.

Overview

You are free:

  • to include BeRTOS within any product, distributed under any license (including commercial licenses and/or closed-source licenses)
  • to modify BeRTOS as you want in any of its part

under the following conditions:

  • Attribution. You must declare in a written statement that you are using BeRTOS in your application and offer to provide the (possibly modified) BeRTOS source code
  • Share-alike. If you modify BeRTOS, you may distribute it only under the original license

You are encouraged to:

  • Contribution. Contribute any modifications to BeRTOS back to us, so that we can integrate and maintain them for you (for free!)

FAQ

  • Is BeRTOS free?
    Yes.
  • Can I use it in my commercial embedded product?
    Yes, but you must declare that you are using it (possibly with a link to this website), and also distribute BeRTOS source code to anyone that might be asking for it.
  • If I use BeRTOS, am I forced to distribute source code of my embedded product?
    Not at all: you only need to distribute the source code of BeRTOS itself, including any modification you have made to it.
  • Do I need to pay any license or royalty?
    No, BeRTOS is completely free.
  • Can I use it without declaring that I'm using it?
    No, because you must offer its source code for download to anyone asking it, so you must mention this at least in the documentation of your product.
  • I don't want to tell anybody I'm using BeRTOS, is this possible?
    Not with the current license, but you can contact us and ask for a modified license.
  • I don't want to offer any BeRTOS source code, is this possible?
    Not with the current license, but you can contact us and ask for a modified license.
  • I didn't modify BeRTOS, can I just put a link to this website in the documentation?
    Yes, that's enough.
  • Why do you want my modifications? Why should I give them to you?
    Because the license says so, but it's also an advantage for you: if you contribute your modifications to BeRTOS, we can integrate them within the official releases, so that we will then maintain those modifications ourselves, for free! Also, we might notice bugs in your code and fix them out, again for free! Contributing modifications is like outsourcing code maintenance for free, which is a real bargain if you think of it.

Details

BeRTOS is copyrighted software, provided under the term of the GNU General Public License version 2 (available here) with following exception:

As a special exception, you may use this file as part of a free software library without restriction. Specifically, if other files instantiate templates or use macros or inline functions from this file, or you compile this file and link it with other files to produce an executable, this file does not by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License.